Grapeshot Magazine | 'Cacti'

GRAPESHOT VOLUME 8: ISSUE 4: CACTI

ISSUE 4: CACTI

CAMPUS NEWS & LIFE | ARTS & CULTURE | STYLE & SUSTAINABILITY | REVIEWS | & MORE

CALENDAR

MAY / JUNE MONDAY

16 Grapeshot Issue 4 released

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TUESDAY

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Internatoinal Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia Event in the Central Courtyard

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THURSDAY

19

25

26

Geek Pride Day

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1

2

8

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World No Tobacco Day Student Election Senate Term of Office DRAMAC Godzilla Commences

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FRIDAY

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SATURDAY

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Reel Sydney Festival of World Cinema (Sutherland Entertainment Centre)

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3rd Senate Meeting Student Election of 2016

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WEDNESDAY

Best Friends Day Sydney Film Festivals Starts

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22 Sydney Writers Festival Ends

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Vivid Festival Begins

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4

10

11

Doughnut Day

SUNDAY

Queen’s Birthday Weekend

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Mother’s Day

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World Environment Day

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Do you have an upcoming event? Let us know and we’ll do our best to include it in our calendar. Email grapeshot@mq.edu.au

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFS’ LETTER Regina Featherstone

This issue is bittersweet for me. It’s my last after four years in various roles with Grapeshot. As my responsibilities grew so did my workload, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’ve made a whole bunch of friends, but I also hope I have contributed to the overall student landscape at Club Mac. I will always hold a fondness for Grapeshot, not just because of the opportunities it has given me, but because it connected me to the university. I think student magazines are one of the last true connections to that iconic idea of university and I’m really proud I was able to be involved.

I first picked up Grapeshot in my second year of uni. It was weird, I had never picked up a copy before and for some reason, was drawn to it that day. I opened it up on a random page and I saw my friend’s name in the by-line. I read the article with tears in my

eyes how I learnt of his ongoing OCD and depression issues. I learnt more about my friend’s hidden troubles from this magazine than what I had got to know about him in our first year at university.

I think the magazine is important for so many reasons and I can’t wait to see what the new Editor-in-Chief, Angela Heathcote and the team do with the rest of 2016.

You may be thinking ‘Cacti, hmm what’s Cacti?’ or you maybe thinking nothing because you are stressed about uni, I get that. Well Cacti isn’t really about anything.

It’s the plural of Cactus if that helps? I guess it could be about prickly issues or deserts but I can’t even claim that. It’s about everything that’s in this mag, that’s what.

In The Challenge (p.18) we totally peer-pressured poor, ol’ Phil into getting a random tattoo he had to pick from four sealed envelopes. One option was Iggy Azalea. I’m so sorry again, Ann (Phil’s mum).

We sat down with Benjamin Law, (p.26) creator of popular SBS show, The Family Law to talk about Asian representation, vaginas and Borat. In news, we run through the Student Representative Council (SRC) and how things really work for students (p.10).

Good luck with exams, your life and trying to rock a turtle neck this winter.

Xo Regie

EDITORIAL & CREATIVE PRODUCTION EDITOR IN CHIEF Regina Featherstone DEPUTY EDITOR Amy Hadley FEATURES EDITOR Yehuda Aharon NEWS EDITOR Anna Glen REGULARS EDITOR Phillip Leason COPY EDITOR Rebecca McMartin and Amelia van der Rijt COPY EDITOR ASSISTANT Erin Christie WEB EDITOR Angela Heathcote WEB DEVELOPER Andrew Rasheed CREATIVE DIRECTORS Hussein Nabeel and Caitlin Thom MARKETING TEAM ADVERTISING MANAGER Ellen Barrett MARKETING MANAGER Aura Lee OUR AWESOME CONTRIBUTORS Sarah Basford, Bohdi Byles, Benjamin Cant, Cameron Colwell, Angus Dalton, Jessica Dinh, Josphine Fenn, Amy Hadley, Emma Harvey, Emma Jackson, Nikita Jones, Anjali Nadaradjane, Lesa Parker Lloyd, Michael Pellegrino, Greta Quealy, Belinda Ramsay, Erin Russell, Elsa Schneider, O. Sosweti, Mikhayla Trope, Nick Wasiliev EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD STUDENT MEMBERS Sarah Basford, Shantell Bailey, Natalie Dainer, Kris Gilmour, Sarah Li Lee Lien, Yi Wong, Timothy Zhang COORDINATOR Melroy Rodrigues PUBLISHER Kim Guerin Grapeshot would like to acknowledge the Darug people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, and pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

Macquarie University Law Society magazine Edition 1, 2016 (Volume 22)

Edition 1, 2016 | 1

Stayraont tthoef fo r ef law the www.muls.org/ the-brief

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ISSUE 4: CACTI

CONTENTS 5 NEWS 6 NEWS FLASH 8 RECOGNISING IDAHOT: QUEER STORIES 10 DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR SRC IS UP TO? 12 CONCEPTION DAY: AN IRREPLACEABLE INSTITUTION 14 ENROL TO VOTE

15 REGULARS

25 FEATURES

37 CREATIVE

16 A GUIDE TO FINDING

26 INTERVIEW WITH

38 YOUR MOUTH IS AN

YOUR SOLEMATE

BENJIMAN LAW: A

ASHTRAY

18 THE CHALLENGE:

LOVABLE NARCISSISTIC

40 READY

LUCKY DIP TATTOO

MONSTER

42 SABRA

20 GRAPESHOT FASHION:

28 IN THE FLESH: THE

EVERYONE’S GONE

SENSORY EXPERIENCE

CACTYLE

OF NOISE

22 MUSINGS FROM LAW

30 TALKING MISOGYNY

SCHOOL

WITH CHARLOTTE WOOD

24 FAKE ADVICE: JESSIE

32 RABBITS EAT LETTUCE 34 WHAT NOT TO WEAR

43 REPEAT OFFENDERS 44 THE STEW 46 REVIEWS 50 HOROSCOPES

N E WS

YOUNG LIBERAL VICE PRESIDENT RESIGNS AFTER BUZZFEED OUTING

PNG COURT DECLARES MANUS ISLAND DETENTION ILLEGAL WORDS || AMY HADLEY

WORDS || ANNA GLEN Edwin Nelson has resigned as the Vice President of the Macq Young Liberals after online news site, BuzzFeed, published an article on a series of homophobic and transphobic statuses from Nelson’s public Facebook page.

Nelson has since deleted his Facebook page, which often drew wide criticism and controversy because of his views on the topics such as marriage equality, abortion and sexual assault. In the status published by BuzzFeed, Nelson asked: “to all my left wing friends out there… is it wrong for two homosexual men who are brothers to sleep with eachother [sic]” and, “if I find homosexuality gross should it be illegal?”

The Macq Liberal Club released a statement saying they did not support or condone Nelson’s comments.

However Nelson’s employer, Liberal MP Kevin Connelly, defended the comments in relation to homosexuality, saying “Mr Nelson has made the logical and unremarkable observation that proponents of changing the definition of marriage to include any two adults who love each other would have no rational basis on which to exclude two adult brothers or two adult sisters from that definition of ‘marriage’”.

An anonymous member of the Macq Young Liberals has told Grapeshot that Nelson’s online shaming is part of a larger factional battle currently being fought in the Liberal Party. They believe Edwin’s statuses were brought to the attention of BuzzFeed in an attempt to damage the reputation of Nelson’s employer, Mr Connelly, who is from the ‘hard Right’ faction of the Liberal party.

They said the fact Nelson worked for Connelly was not public knowledge and therefore must have been leaked by a fellow member of the Young Liberals, most likely a member of the ‘soft Right’ faction.

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On March 26 the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court declared detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island to be illegal. Such detention is considered a breach of personal liberties by the nation’s constitution.

Loani Henao, the lawyer for PNG’s opposition leader, told Sky News that this action “...means both governments must take steps to effectively shut down the Manus Island detention centre.”

Labor immigration spokesperson Richard Marles said the detention centre was not intended to be permanent, with Julia Gillard signing a 12 month contract with PNG to use Manus Island as a refugee and asylum seeker processing centre. The expectation was that the one year agreement would be long enough to process and resettle hundreds of people.

Despite this, it is still unclear whether the detention centre will actually close. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has declared that, “People who have attempted to come illegally by boat and are now in the Manus facility will not be settled in Australia.”

Human rights advocates have applauded the decision and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young has claimed that “Peter Dutton is out of options ... Manus Island is over and Australia is responsible for what will happen to the people who are there.”

LEGENDARY FILM CRITICS MARGARET AND DAVID RECEIVE MQ HONORARY DOCTORATES

TURNBULL PROPOSES INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT TO CREATE ‘30-MINUTE CITIES’

WORDS || ANNA GLEN

WORDS || ANGELA HEATHCOTE

Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton were among over 4 000 students who received degrees from Macquarie University over the autumn graduation period. Known best for their ABC television series At the Movies, both critics were awarded Honorary Doctorates for their contributions to the film industry.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced that he will be committing 50 billion dollars to cities and urban transport to create so called ‘30-minute cities’.

Margaret attended Macquarie in the 1960s where she studied German and social psychology. She said she was honoured to receive the degree, and commented on the positive effect Macquarie had on her life and career.

Population density, along with poor transport infrastructure, has hampered the efficiency of public transport in Australia’s major cities and is high on the election agenda.

Earlier in March, the Prime Minister insisted that, “If you invest in good transport infrastructure, then density gives greater amenity because there are more things to do, you’re closer to work, you’re closer to university.”

“I am so honoured by being awarded this degree by Macquarie University. This is an institution that changed my life, gave me belief in my abilities and truly contributed to the career that I’ve subsequentlyenjoyed. It is a glorious return to myalma materfor which I am very grateful,” Margaret said.

This commitment to infrastructure will ideally result in a number of benefits including the alleviation of traffic congestion, easing of the housing affordability crisis, as well as increased accessibility for those who do not live in the inner city.

David was equally chuffed and said he appreciated the award in light of the fact that he never completed high school, nor did he attend university, something he said he had always regretted.

Turnbull says that an increased commitment to infrastructure funding, with the addition of a new financing unit to attract investors, will hasten the project. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has said, however, “I don’t believe that’s anywhere near enough. It looks like just a little bit of business case palling in the first instance…”

With a growing media department at Macquarie, Margaret and David are impressive additions to the alumni. Welcome to the MQ club!

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Recognising IDAHOT: Queer stories WORDS || BOHDI BYLES & LESA PARKER LLOYD

Background: International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) is celebrated on 17 May. While it’s a day recognised and celebrated by millions of people in more than 130 countries, it’s also a day that serves as a reminder. IDAHOT represents those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and all those who do not conform to majority sexual and gender norms. The date itself represents the day in 1990 when the World Health Organisation stopped looking at homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Discrimination and violence are a day-to-day occurrence for many people in the gay community. 40 per cent of the world’s population is not free to choose who they can love, and can even face criminal sanctions for doing so. Police violence, state oppression, murders, stigma, ostracisation, bullying and cyberbullying are just a few of the issues that faced by sexual and gender minorities.

We can and should celebrate the progress and strides that the LGBTQIA+ community has made in recent times. But the journey forward is far from over and it would be ignorant to believe otherwise. IDAHOT reminds us that humans deserve basic rights, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

Help mark IDAHOT at Macquarie on Tuesday 17 May from 12pm - 2pm in the Central Courtyard.

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BOHDI BYLES: I’M GAY AND I IDENTIFY AS GENDERFLUID My name is Bohdi, I’m 22, and I’m an Aquarius. Sounds boring and mundane, right? Reading all these facts? One day, I hope I can say, “I’m Bodhi, I’m gay, and I identifyas genderfluid,” and itwill be just as mundane and boring. I also recently found out that I’m Aboriginal, following my Pop’s passing away in 2011. He was a member of the Stolen Generation, and I have no idea where my people are or where I’m from, but one day I hope to find them.

I came out as gay in 2012 when I started at Macquarie. This was also the time I finally escaped high school and the bullies that told me that I should be burned alive and shot in the head. I was depressed and suicidal, I was scared that I would lose all my friends, that I would be ostracised socially, and that I would be kicked out of home. It got to be so much that I decided it would be

better to just come out. My mum’s response was, “It’s about time. Now go clean your room”. I’d panicked about her response for nothing, apparently.

My grandma’s response, on the other hand, was “You’re going to get AIDS and die.” Her perspective has shifted over time and she recently asked me how Mardi Gras was and said that people must be born this way.

I came out as genderfluid last year.

It wasn’t until I heard the phrase, ‘genderfluid’ that it struck something deep in me that made me say “that’s how I feel.” Gender fluidity simply means that on some days I feel more female than male, some days I feel more male than female, and some days I feel both at once. The concepts and discussions surrounding gender fascinate me.

drastically in a physical sense since coming out. The real change has been emotional and mental. What helped me most was when I started looking into spirituality. It completely shifted my perspective, and made me realise that perspective is everything.

A quote that I live by is, “In this life, people will love you and people will hate you, and none of that will have anything to do with you.” It wasn’t until I realised that peoples’ opinions about me do not make me who I am: what I feel makes me who I am. I love who I am, and I am proud of who I am. So this is me in my entirety, and it’s nice to meet you.

I can’t say life has changed too

LESA PARKER LLOYD: I AM A PROUD BUNDJALUNG ABORIGINAL WOMAN. I AM A MOTHER. I AM QUEER AND RESISTING. ALWAYS RESISTING. I found these few hundred words incredibly difficult to write. Not because of the content but because I felt a burden of responsibility to be representative. After much internal conflict I concluded that I could only provide the reader with insight into my own story. My identity is complex.

I am a proud Bundjalung Aboriginal woman. I am a mother. I am queer and resisting. Always resisting.

I first came out in 1990. I say first because ‘coming out’ as anything other than what society has constructed as ‘the norm’ wasn’t heard of. When I first came out I wasn’t aware of what queer was. I just knew that how I perceived myself, and how I wanted to love and be loved was not like the representations of life that I had seen around me.

In the 1990s, HIV/AIDS was impacting the gay and lesbian community that

I lived in. Young men I knew were dying. I got involved with ACT-UP and the pride collective because at the time, homosexuality was illegal in Queensland. It was as an activist that I started to embrace queer. Queer for me is about me, not about who I may choose to have sex or play with. Queer has a history built on resistance. As an Aboriginal woman, I know resistance. Resistance may seem hard but it has made me strong.

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Don’t know what your SRC is up to? It’s probably not your fault WORDS || YEHUDA AHARON

In early April, Grapeshot’s News Editor, and member of the Student Representative Committee, Anna Glen, proposed two motions to radically improve the relationship between the SRC and Grapeshot, as well as the wider student body.

As Grapeshot’s publisher is a member of Macquarie Staff, the first motion related to the publisher’s editorial powers over Grapeshot’s content. Having previously pulled articles after alleging that their content was defamatory, the Grapeshot editorial team maintains that the university withdraws articles that are merely unfavourable to Macquarie as a brand, with no regard for how important the information may be to the student body.

A resolution was sought by Grapeshot, as these withdrawals continue to occur well beyond editors’ deadlines, proving to be a great burden on the quality of the magazine.

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More complications arose due to problems with a lack of collaboration between the Editorial Review Board and the publisher. The SRC resolved to explore solutions in later meetings.

The second motion proposed that a Grapeshot observer should be allowed to attend SRC meetings and report on proceedings to the student body.

Glen said, “[I] put forward what I thought was a fairly uncontroversial motion to have a reporter from Grapeshot sit in on SRC meetings. This was done because the public minutes of SRC meetings are not uploaded in a timely manner and they also do not give any insights on the deliberations of the meetings.”

For the minutes to be released they have to be ratified at the following meeting. Such meetings occur approximately every two months. This means reporting of the minutes can be severely delayed. For

instance, the meeting held on 4 April is unable to be reported on until 31 May – almost two months after the 4 April meeting.

Keeping in mind that the SRC determines how Student Services Amenities Fees (SSAFs) are used, and also represents student interests to the university, this rejection is problematic.

For Grapeshot, it is crucial that students are given frank and up-to-date news relating to how this money is used and how our elected representatives carry out their roles.

Formerly known as the Student Advisory Board, the SRC is currently in the process of reworking its constitution to provide a medium between the chancellery and students. According to SRC Treasurer Lachlan McGrath, the SRC is still in a formative state and is therefore not yet ready to allow members of Grapeshot to witness deliberations.

McGrath said “I love the idea of a more transparent SRC but I also know that the SRC needs to work with the University in order to get things done and this motion would have pissed off parts of the University that would have made doing our job significantly more difficult. This is a small compromise that we have to deal with so that we can get some of our projects off the ground and do things that actually benefit students.” This is not to say that the SRC has not achieved a great deal this year: they’ve brought students a $3 breakfast bar (now scrapped), run a successful O-week, and are continuing to stand up for diversity. There remains, however, a lack of communication between officials and the student body.

Glen said the decision to maintain closed meetings did not receive support from the entire SRC, with many members abstaining or voting against the motion. She said “certain members did not want a Grapeshot member in the meeting to report the deliberation of minutes due to the potential for negative coverage. The consequence is that SRC does not want students to know what they are doing because of fear of their own incompetency… It is the norm across universities nationwide for SRCs to hold open meetings.”

Kieren Ash, who is a member of the SRC and also sits on the University Council, voted in favour of the motion and told Grapeshot “this initiative was an important piece of reform for the SRC. Transparency and accountability are crucial for healthy student democracy, and this sort of scrutiny is common to many universities. If we want students to take us seriously, we need to take them seriously too. That means we trust them to understand what we are doing, that we are looking after their interests” Without knowing exactly what issues are deliberated upon during SRC meetings, within a time frame in which topics stay relevant, how are students supposed to engage with those that claim to represent them?

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OPINION PIECE

Conception Day AN IRREPLACEABLE INSTITUTION WORDS || MICHAEL PELLEGRINO

The Student Representative Council (SRC) is currently in talks with the university to create a new music and arts festival to be held September.

The event will be the second attempt to replace Conception Day after ‘FAME’ woefully flopped last year. The SRC created an optimistic Facebook event inviting students to give suggestions on what the new event might look like:

In 2016, the SRC wants to create an event that is better than FAME, bigger than Conception Day and more fun than that first joyride you took when you got your Ps. But we need your help! To make this event exactly what you want it to be, we need you to give us all the feedback you have: what did you like and not like about Conception Day? What did you think of FAME? What event would you like to see in 2016?

Michael Pellegrino, founder of the ‘Bring Back Conception Day’ petition and Facebook page, says the SRC does not need a new concept – it just needs to bring Conception Day back.

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Conception Day: a day of booze, quality live music and a celebration of all sorts of shameless and forgetful behaviour. While such themes ring true of the festival itself, it’s the tradition and irreplaceable vibe Conception Day gives the student body that makes it the staple event of every university calendar – well for 41 years it did, until it was scrapped in 2015.

So where to now?

Australia’s longest running music festival has its roots buried deep in the quirky social web of Macquarie student life since its inception in 1969. What started off as a day of pranking, harmless shenanigans and disrupting traffic eventually evolved into a gala of university life and all things Macquarie – an event that has delivered solid line ups of countless music inspirations including Birds of Tokyo, Blue Juice, Flume, Tigerlily and Allday. To the annoyance of the greater part of the student body, the festival was canned after 2014 due to a “decline in student numbers”. Instead, we were offered FAME.

But how exactly do we get Conception Day back? I mean, that is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Like any movement, for the retrieval of Conception Day to be successful, we must unite as a student body to communicate to the university that Conception Day is our birthright as Macquarie students.

It is an irreplaceable experience. From our gnomestealing forefathers, to breaking the world record for mass tequila consumption in 2003, to the classic village-based Conception Day pres, where a vodka-fuelled 8 am breakfast is the norm, there is nothing quite as special to Macquarie as Conception Day.

Umm wot?

Despite the bean bag haven we call “MUSE” and our own train station, there is nothing as special and as meaningful to the heart of Macquarie as Conception Day.

It is harder to decide what was more disappointing: axing Conception Day, or replacing it with FAME – a shoddy collection of overpriced food trucks, downcast ‘performers’ with untuned guitars, and collapsing marquees with a capacity of 200 that was attended by about three people.

An ugly failure and an easily forgettable mark in the history books of Macquarie University, FAME triggered the call to “Bring Back Conception Day”.

We have easily accomplished the tasks of ‘meme-ing’ and hacking FAME to death via online protest in favour of bringing back Conception Day. In fact, that has proved to be the most effective way to centralise the sentiment against FAME and profess our love of Conception Day.

*The SRC is continuing to take recommendations on the new event and can be contacted at src@mq.edu.au or through the ‘Macquarie University SRC’ Facebook page.

LAME Festival was a blessing in the sense that it made us, the party-loving peeps we are, realise how grateful we are for Conception Day, and its place in our heart.

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Enrol To Vote The election is approaching but 1 in 4 young people are still not enrolled to vote WORDS || NICK WASILIEV

Malcolm Turnbull has officially announced that he intends to hold a double-dissolution election on 2 July. Now, many of us roll our eyes at even the mention of the word ‘politics’, and, in all fairness, it’s kind of understandable. Politicians can often seem out of touch with young adults.

But with an election fast approaching, it’s time to get serious about enrolling to vote. It may surprise you, but our generation is THE sleeping giant of political change, and the reason is because a lot of us do not actually sign up to vote.

In the 2013 election 400 000 people aged 18-24 failed to enrol. Considering that two-thirds of that age cohort surveyed have said they would support either Labor or the Greens, the actual result of the last election might have been vastly different if those people had turned up to vote. To put it simply, our political influence is kind of a big deal.

Dr. Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, the Greens candidate for North Sydney and founding member of antismoking group BUGA-UP, believes that the youth vote is the most powerful force in Australian politics.

“Youth would have a great effect on the election result. Look at the voting push for Bernie Sanders in the USA. [Its] much more progressive. Kids have to look to the future- oldies only have to try and maintain their own current status quo. [If more youth could vote] there would be more interest in youth unemployment and intergenerational inequity, and numerically it would counteract the grey vote.”

Voting goes beyond the pure face value of electing a leader, Liberal or Labor. The fact is that both major parties have made changes to issues that young adults care about. These include changes to higher

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education leading to increasing university expenses, same sex marriage, employment laws, climate change policy.

The reason our generation may seem unwilling to vote, according to Dr. Chesterfield-Evans, is because we ourselves have lost faith in the system.

“It is hard to believe in a system that is manifestly not solving the problems, especially from the [youth] point of view. I think that they need to be persuaded that the only real hope is coordinated action and the political system has to regain its legitimacy as a way of people acting together. While the political system is not the total solution, it is a valid starting point for action.”

The point is, if you don’t sign up, what happens if a party is elected, and they introduce policies that will directly affect you? If you enrol to vote, you have the power to have a say and affect change.

So, to all those who haven’t enrolled, know this: you have the power to change our future. It’s time for our generation to wake up, and be the political force we were born to be.

Signing up isn’t an automatic process, but it’s easy.

Get out your laptop/tablet/phone now, and head to: http://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/.

It only takes five minutes.

REGULARS

A GUIDE TO FINDING YOUR

SOLEMATE WORDS & DOODLES || SARAH BASFORD

sneaker

noun 1. a soft shoe worn for sports or casual occasions.

So, it’s 2016 and we’ve reached a stage in fashion where wearing sneakers with jeans or skirts or dresses is acceptable and, dare I say, trendy. This is great for fashion dags like me who really want to look nice-ish with the least

amount of effort. I’ve decided to whip up a semi-guide to finding that perfect pair of soles for anyone out there (maybe like me) who is undecided on which pumps to throw their v limited amount of cash at.

I will now unveil to you, a pretty shitty overview of 2016’s hawtest. You’ve been warned.

VANS OLD SKOOL

NIKE AIR MAX THEA

So, this one is more of a ~skate shoe~ than your standard sneaker. This is more for your “I don’t skate man, I’m just riding the wave of life” types, but who gives a fuck, it works with most outfits.

These ones have kind of overtaken the Nike Roshe in terms of popularity. Everyone seems to have a pair and it’s boring. To shake it up, buy an ugly green pair or something with freaky patterns on it.

Average price: $120~

Average price: $140~

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NEW BALANCE 620

ADIDAS ZX FLUX

So I can’t really be objective here because I own a pair These ones rank pretty high on the ‘phresh’ scale, but in the ugliest colour combo in the world (FYI, it’s green they also kind of look like TNs so I don’t actually know and pink), but these are comfy as hell. They’re more for if ‘phresh’ is good. They’re a bit cheaper than the other your faux-anti-establishment types who don’t fuck with sporty-casual options which is nice, because they Nike. basically all look the same.

Average price: $120~

Average price: $100~

YEEZY BOOST 350

KMART KICKS

I’m not even sure this looks like a shoe, but it’s pricey as fuck so that means it’s good… right? Well, maybe, I’ll probably never know. Ya boy Pablo/Yeezy/Ye/Kanye West designed them and then wrote a song about them so they’re probably more famous than you’ll ever be.

If you don’t actually understand how people spend more than $20 on shoes, then head to Kmart because it is your spirit department store. Draw ticks on them in correction fluid if you need to and rock them every day. I’ve bought many pairs. They are my true solemates.

Average price: Anywhere between $100 to $5000.

Probably avoid if you like having money.

Average price: An hour’s wage.

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THE CHALLENGE: Lucky-Dip Tattoo

WORDS || PHILLIP LEASON Another Grapeshot meeting, and a few jugs have been drunk before we get to discussing ‘The Challenge’. The first idea is to turn me into a human cactus: acupuncture.

That’s not far enough, apparently, so continuing the needles theme, Lucky-Dip Tattoo seemed like the next logical step. My fragile male ego and better judgement lost out to the beers: “Fuck it. I’ll do it.”

So, some days later when our designer Huss has drawn up some pictures, I meet with Angela outside The Electric Texta in Woy Woy. Before we begin, we go for a coffee and I’m presented with four envelopes, each containing a design. It’s a bit like being a contestant on Deal or No Deal, but instead of money I’m likely going to have permanent embarrassment etched onto my body. And instead of Andrew O’Keefe’s dad humour, I have Angela, and her conniving smirk to guide me through my decision. I pick number three.

As we make our way into the studio, Ange checks the envelope and a pained look of pity sweeps over her face, “Ohh you… You picked a bad one.” The overpowering smell of ink makes me light headed, and to make matters worse, Black Sabbath’s song ‘Black Sabbath,’ from the Black Sabbath album, is playing. You know the one that’s probably Satan’s ringtone? Talk about ominous.

I meet my artist, Dan – a chipper, Where’s Wally looking hipster, and I’m told to wait outside while he draws up

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a stencil. At this point I still don’t know what I’m getting, but I’m allowed to open the other envelopes, to see the options I dodged. There’s a drum being played with chicken drumsticks, a zombified cactus, and a portrait of Iggy Azalea, over a banner that reads, “NO REGRETS IGGY <3”. The international joke of hip hop and the most ironically regrettable motivational slogan ever was an option, yet I still managed to get the bad one? What the fuck, I’m feeling ill.

Fortunately, it turns out Ange lied, I hadn’t picked the bad option. The image I’m getting indelibly plastered on my skin is a sketch of my Facebook profile picture, only I’m an otter. It’s a vanity tattoo. I pick the back of my thigh.

While Dan inks me up, a rather overweight, middle-aged guy sits on the chair next to me, his bare feet inches from my face. He removes his shirt for an arm tattoo (although he could just as easily have rolled up his sleeve), and his hairy innie-nipples are glaring at me as he tries to haggle over pricing. To distract myself I ask Dan what the stupidest tattoo he’s ever given somebody is. “A mate got me to tattoo ‘YOLO’ on his arse cheek, but with a hand giving peace as the Y. Otherwise, yeah, this is probably the winner.” So I’ve got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

Once we’re out, I hop back on the train to Sydney, periodically mopping up blood and ink that’s seeping from the glad wrap. I need to tell my parents about what’s happened. This isn’t my first tattoo, but it’s definitely my most irresponsible. I tell dad first, and explain the

WINNER

lucky-dip process. His reaction is somewhere between bewilderment and dismissal, “Erm, well, that was your decision to make.” That’s until he remembers I’ll now have to wait six months before I can donate blood, and it’s this which makes him snap. Of all the things, he’s shitty that I can’t let the Red Cross bleed me out until October. Next, I have to tell mum. As we all know, the one thing worse than anger is disappointment, and her reaction broke my heart. Before I finish a sentence she interrupts, choked up, to say that she doesn’t want to hear about me getting another tattoo, and that she’s going to go. Dad calls a few hours later to explain, “She’s not upset with you, she just worries that you’ve done something you’re going to regret, and can’t undo.”

I can understand why it worries her. It’s nearly healed now, and the reality is sinking in. Every day of my life I’m going to see a picture of myself as an otter. But I can confirm that I don’t regret letting this happen, and I don’t think that I ever will. You see, I don’t take photos, and I don’t write in journals - things like this are all I have to inform my memory of the past. So when I’m forty, I won’t be quaking with rage and damning the Grapey team for ruining my body. When I see this picture I’m going to, quite literally, see myself at 21. New friends, binge drinking, hard work and hopefulness, working for a little magazine and doing stupid shit: these are all of the things that make these the best days of my life, and I think there’s no better way to remember it. #noragrets

19

Grapeshot Fashion Everyone’s Gone Cactyle WORDS || ANGELA HEATHCOTE The world has gone completely cactyle. Finding a place beyond the slickest hipsters windowsills, the prickle and scratch has us swooning, but not for the first time. Their anatomy is meticulously preserved in botanical illustrations from centuries gone by, fine in detail and scientific classification.

American botanists Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose in The Cactaceae capture their uniqueness, through various forms of illustration and watercolour, inspiring the patterns and prints we use today.

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Cultivated by hunter-gatherers of the New World, wild cactus fruits, nourishing in content, hard in aesthetic, were even more highly regarded.

Fast-forward a few centuries, where Wild-West cartoons and dessert motives of the American West have been planted deeply within the public consciousness, and we’re left dreaming of barren lands and divine solitude.

So what’s behind our enlivened obsession with plants of the succulent variety? For me, it’s the allure of the dessert flower – something that blossoms in the harshest of climates. In a medley of different shapes, sizes and colours, cacti are the kitschy cool in our lives.

Trippy Tie-dye Let’s Get Patchy Arizona Barrel Cactus, Prickly Pears, Desert Roses and Calico Hearts – these are the new decorum, bringing new life to exhausted denim, as they have throughout the ages. Patches – tokens of local girl scouts, a troop crest and some brownie wings, have gone beyond the novelty, adding a serious bad-gal temperament to our wardrobe staples. Coupled with the manageable shapes of cacti, this can turn into a classic DIY. While there are several ways to go about making DIY patches, short on time and money, I’ll break down the laziest approach.

Okay so you’ll need scissors (come on people), a piece of canvas- any colour, coloured thread and an embroidery hoop, no excuses, they can be found at literally any arts and craft store.

Draw the cacti on the canvas and then thread: split stitching is recommended. However, if, like myself, drawing is not your forte, print an online embroidery pattern or even a line drawing and split stitch through the paper. Consider using slogans like “Can’t touch this” or “don’t be a fucking prick” to accompany your designs. Pen a circle around the design to demonstrate how big you’d like the patch to be and then outline it with a satin stitch border (primary school level, no complainin’). Cut around the stitched border, glue and VOILA.

Native to south-western Texas and Mexico, tough with fleshy insides, the peyote cactus blooms.

It stimulates an entire generation of thoughts and colours, highly contrasted and shaped into endless swirls. Psychedelic art was initially used to enhance the experiences of psychoactive drugs during the countercultural movements of the 1960s.

It has since become common food for the eye, experiencing a kind of rebirth in the past few years alongside the current golden age for Australian music festivals. Now you may not be the doobie wielding, fuck-the-system kind of person, and no, tie-dye isn’t known for its subtlety, however nothing is impossible.

Dip dying is the simplest form of tie dying and paired with your homemade patch, things could get interesting. If you’re looking to make things just a little trippy I’d recommend getting 3-4 medium-sized bowls and varying the amount of dye powder by the teaspoon that you will apply to each. Then dampen your piece of clothing and level the colours accordingly.

If you decide to pair your cactus patch with your tie-dyed garment, small portions of dye in colours of pink or orange are recommend. These colours come out nicely pale and blend well with the cacti. If this style is too straight edge, crumble dying has a more vivid effect.

21

WHAT ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION?

CIVIL PROCEDURE

PROPERTY COMPANY LAW

CONTRACTS

MUSINGS FROM LAW SCHOOL WORDS || REGINA FEATHERSTONE

Back in 2011, I was excited to begin at Macquarie University. The grass, lake and the trees made me feel relaxed about moving to Sydney from Lithgow, at the bottom of the Blue Mountains. However, upon enrolment, I was shocked by the number of compulsory units I would have to do before I could pick subjects that I was interested in. I would have to wait until my fourth year to study subjects like ‘Hate Law’, ‘Human Rights and Moral Dilemmas’ and ‘Law and Religion’.

And so law took off to a bumpy start. I vividly recall one of my early tutors reminiscing about his time in a big firm. He told us how he used to fantasise about walking in front of a bus to get out of work for a couple of weeks. He told us how work becomes your life, that you sleep in the office and miss family events. I was horrified. He continued

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to talk about his boss’ office, which had hand prints on the windows. When the tutor asked what they were from, his boss said that he was ‘seeing how hard he could press before the glass would break and he could fall to his death’. Two girls I sat near remained unaffected, glowing as if they were excited by the prospect of working for such a firm. They said it was worth it because you are setting your (non-existent) children up for life.

If you’re a law student, you’ll be familiar with the ‘Priestly 11’, but if you aren’t, this is the list of compulsory subjects that are an academic requirement to obtain your law degree in Australia. This includes things like Property, Equity, Contract, Torts and Corporations Law. Unsurprisingly, I found the majority of these to be very dry, but I also found it difficult to appreciate their worth. I had no idea why I needed to study Corporations law if I had no interest in working in that area, and I became

THE PRIESTLY 11

EVIDENCE

FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

EQUITY

TORTS

CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE

bored with my degree. The first chance I got to take an elective was when I went on exchange to Norway. There I studied subjects like ‘Refugee Law’, ‘Women’s Law and Human Rights’ and ‘International Criminal Law’, subjects that were, at the time, unavailable to me at Macquarie. I explained this in my introduction about myself and my lecturer responded with, ‘How disgraceful, and you wonder why you continue to treat refugees so appallingly?’ Not only did this trilingual lecturer have the linguistic ability to sass Australia, she was also right. Why does the Priestley 11 not contain one fundamental course on Human Rights?

With more law students at university than ever, I felt like we were being given one side of the coin with our compulsory education. I once shared these thoughts at a barbecue with a practicing lawyer of five years, one of the robots, straight off the law school factory conveyor-belt. He dismissively assured me, ‘corporations law is fundamental for understanding how refugee charities work, so how could anyone say corporations law isn’t human rights?’ I was blown away as this nearly thirty-year-old man continued to tell me that corporations are the essence of human rights.

ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

I’m not sure what the structure of a company had to do with the Rwandan Genocide, or how fiduciary duties are related to human trafficking, but apparently it’s big.

Subjects like Corporations and Property law may be important, but so are many other areas of law, areas that were not being taught. If we want to look at our appalling human rights track record, we need to look at the type of people who are making those laws. Macquarie doesn’t have a full Asylum Law course nor a Feminist Legal Theory course. While, both can be found within other subjects like the new ‘Human Rights, Policy and the Law’ or in electives like ‘Pleasure and Danger: Sex and the Law’ and ‘Family Law’, I think there is space to incorporate more of these subjects into the university.

It took me five-and-a-half years of study, and a new, limited-spaces class on social justice for me to hear from others who shared my opinions. But at least I got to hear them. I have had a good time studying at Macquarie and abroad, and I applaud MQU for its law school developments. I only hope that more universities will follow suit with compulsory human rights and social justice education.

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FAKE ADVICE FROM

J E S S I E W O R D S

||

N I K I TA

J O N E S

Howdy Leah, Well isn’t that just the sweetest darn question I ever did get.

Listen partner, you’ve come to the right cowgirl, I know just how it feels to be sitting on the shelf, dreaming of a set of uselessly floppy fabric arms holding you close. Trust me it’s no use sowing all your seeds into one paddock, getting swept off your boots by the first grinning cowboy you see.

Way back before Buzz and I started mashing our plastic faces against each other, I spent my days dreaming of a certain pullstring toy with a certain ‘snake’ in his ‘boot’. I collected all his merchandise and tried my hardest to get him to stick around.

Just a hot tip, boys tend to find it creepy when you own a lunchbox with their face on it, who knew? Anyway, after all that Woody and I just decided we were better off being good pals. Maybe it’ll turn out the same with your dashing sheriff?

D ear Jessie,

There is a guy in one of my tutorials who is absolutely gorgeous with a super charming smile. I think I’m in love but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know who I am. How do I get him to notice me?

- Leah

At the end of the muster, you gotta promise that you’ll never settle for anything less than the hootinest tootinest guy around.

You deserve the real thing, not some darn cheap Matel knockoff.

Some boys only think with their disturbingly smooth plastic nether regions and you definitely don’t need those kind of root n’ scoot guys in your life. They’ll do you no good. You want a fella who cares more about your stuffing than your packaging, a fella with spurs in his boots not his personality, a fella with a Spanish setting, maybe, just an idea.

But listen, if you want a boy to see you for the sweet batch of pumpkin pie you are all you have to do is just be yourself. The boot scootinest cowboy is gonna love you for you.

If all else fails, with the adult edition of ‘Woody’ and ‘Buzz’ (batteries not included), you won’t be needin’ a boyfriend.

Yeehaw!

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F E AT U R E S

Angus Dalton sits down with Benjamin Law. WORDS II ANGUS DALTON

B

A

Lovable Narcissistic Monster 26

enjamin Law’s parents, Jenny and Danny, fled Hong Kong leading up to the 1997 Chinese takeover of the territory from the British. They arrived in Brisbane as newlyweds, and over the years 16 family members trickled over to meet them, nursing pregnant bellies and clutching tourist visas. Most of them were deported after the AFP raided their homes during the night. Benjamin and his four siblings grew up in a house he describes as a “lasagne of shit” in a very white Brisbane suburb. They barely saw his work-junkie Dad, who birthed and buried many doomed businesses over the course of their childhood, and their matriarch mother harbours zero reluctance in complaining about her “floppy vagina meat” that her childbearing years have rendered “dingly-dangly”. The Law family have endured many straining times.

So what brings them all together?

Borat.

“The one thing that really glued the family together when we were growing up was movies. Arthouse, blockbusters, weird European movies with boobs and dicks that we didn’t quite understand, anything,” says Ben. “It’s always really hard to choose one, ‘cause Mum likes arty, sensible films, and my brother is like super hetero and macho and always wants to watch some trashbag blockbuster. But the one film that really brought us together was Borat. I thought it was so smart, the commentary on the media and its investigation of America … and obviously we all just liked the fucken fart jokes. There’s something in there for

everyone,” he says fondly. “Although we did just see the last Sacha Baron Cohen film, Grimsby, and-” he cringes, “it was pretty bad. I mean, we all laughed at it, cause you’d have to have brain damage not to, but it’s not smart or clever. Borat was special.’

After years of establishing himself as one of Australia’s snappiest, most voracious and versatile writers (he’s written for basically every Australian publication bar The Daily Telegraph and writes a weekly column for Good Weekend), as of this year Ben has tapped in to the family passion and taken to screen with an SBS TV show based on his memoir, The Family Law. The book is a collection of vignettes, mostly from Ben’s childhood, spliced with his Mum’s frequently ludicrous outbursts about sex, impending death, and her favourite topic: vaginas.

“Can you imagine squeezing a lemon out of your penis hole?” She says to Ben one time when he was foolish enough to bring up the subject of his birth. “A whole lemon – with the points on each end and everything, except this lemon has limbs. Out of your penis hole. PENIS. HOLE.” As you can probably tell, Benjamin’s Mum and the rest of his family life have provided plenty of inspiration for on-screen hilarity. One of the stranger things Ben had to do in the production of the show was cast an actor to play his fourteen-year-old self.

“We were really aware that we were gonna write a version of my younger self that was heightened for television. So he’s a lovable narcissistic monster who’s completely and diabolically fame-hungry. He was gonna do insanely reprehensible things and we still needed to love him. It was difficult because it was definitely going to be an actor we hadn’t heard of before, because we don’t have many Asian-Australian faces on TV, period. But Trystan Go ticked all the boxes. He totally delivers.”

Ben wrote his PhD thesis on Asian representation on Australian TV, firstly addressing the severe lack of Asian characters, and secondly pointing out a kind of neurotic tendency people have to criticise representations of minorities in our media.

“The fewer representations there are of a certain demographic, the more anxious people are about whether they’re right or not,” he says.

This anxiety might be a reason for the lack of diversity on our screens: people are frightened of being disrespectful or accidentally insulting. But Ben is having none of it. He’s pretty irreverent about racial stereotypes; he and his sister co-wrote a book together called Shit Asian Mothers Say, and at one point in his

TV show, his mum Jenny refuses a Japanese woman a seat and remarks; “The Japanese raped our women during the war.” And as an afterthought: “But they do make lovely stationery.”

As much as The Family Law is about an AsianAustralian family, Ben believes race isn’t a defining factor of the show. It’s actually just a waggish, witty show about a quirky Brisbane family going through tough times. His parents’ divorce is what most of the drama centres on in the first season, which is odd, as Ben didn’t actually write about the divorce in his memoir.

“It’s interesting, when I was writing the end of the first episode when Jenny kicks Danny out, I realised I was writing it for the first time – I hadn’t included it in the book. When we scripted it, and it was acted and filmed and edited and when I saw the first rough cut, I was really moved and affected by it. My parents broke up when I was 12, and I started high school with this fracturing family. They didn’t finalise their divorce until the end of Year 12. It went through my whole high school experience. Horrific. But you know, it makes for good material!” He laughs.

The show is doing brilliantly; the pilot has over a million views and series two is underway. For people who have seen or read The Family Law and want some more of Ben’s wicked writing, read Gaysia. This mustread book explores gay culture in Asia. Ben visits male-only nudist hotels in Bali and meets the finalists of the world’s biggest beauty pageant for transsexual women in Thailand. He observes people trying to cure homosexuality in Malaysia by asking Jesus nicely, and visits impoverished places like Myanmar where the HIV is, heartbreakingly, rife. Like all of Ben’s writing, Gaysia is feisty, hilarious, and moving.

“Gay and trans rights are kind of the last frontier in terms of the civil rights movement,” he says. “Writing Gaysia reminded me that there is no place in the world that has eradicated sexism, racism, homophobia or bigotry. As much I’ve written this book about Asia, you could write it anywhere.”

I challenge him to write the sequel, Austgaylia, an exploration of the queer culture of Oz stretching from the glittery bowels of Oxford Street to the lonely plains of the outback, where Grindr blips are as few and far between as shooting stars. He’ll think about it, he laughs, over the weekend – he’s going camping with the rest of the Laws.

“I know right, camping?” he says incredulously. “It was my brother’s idea. I was like, Asians don’t camp!

But whatever. It’ll make a good story if I barely make it back alive.”

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IN THE FLESH: The Sensory Experience of Noise And a conversation with Kusum Normoyle WORDS II PHILLIP LEASON

O

ver the past few months I’ve been noticing the physical effect that glimpses of dissonance in music were having on me; feedback whines and white noise had become more stimulating than catchy melodies and harmonies. So with delusions of grandeur I came to Pretty-Gritty at Redfern’s 107 Projects, to experience dissonance in the flesh. In the event’s words, Pretty-Gritty is “a bimonthly home for ambient electronica and other poorly named genres that play with noise, shattered melodies and broken beats.” In other words that’s “a live music event that the majority of the population would define as a racket, not music.”

I ensconce myself in one of the two couches inside the black room, and a man in his late thirties with his hair in a top-knot takes the other half of the chair, cocking his head to ask me if they’re running late. In our ensuing conversation I learn that he follows these sorts of experimental events around the city, and in my nervousness I regrettably label myself “a noise music virgin”. Grinning, he assures me I’ll be fine. He’s wrong.

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The first performer appears on the makeshift stage behind a table of electronic devices, and starts a static pulsing sound, like the charge of a stun-gun. It’s loud. A lump forms in my throat and I can feel brain synapses popping in response to the surging and crackling.

He slashes open chords on a guitar that’s distorted beyond recognition. It’s unbearably loud. The couch is engulfing me and the floor weighs on my feet as if the room is upside down. I’m noticing my own ears: they’re so very far apart, and the space between them, my skull, is a void. It’s deafening. I’m nauseous, unable to move. Nobody else is in the room. I’ve lost my sense of self. It’s over. Both the piece and, seemingly, my own existence, ending together. There’s no grand climax, no resolution or resolve, they’re simply faded out into nothingness. As the ringing in my ears subsides, reality sits out of focus, and I’m left squinting my eyes to try and clear the fog.

That was the first of four short sets that evening and, had I been able to regain proper motor-function afterwards, I probably would have left, but my useless limbs kept me bound to the couch. Initially I couldn’t comprehend why dozens of people would come to experience this for listening pleasure. Beauty of form and harmony are definitional foundations of music, and I heard neither of these. But come the third and most affronting performance from Kusum Normoyle, I felt I was starting to catch on. Armed with just a microphone, an amp and her voice, she savaged every person in that cozy room, screeching in demonic tongues, sending feedback tearing through the space.

Yet it was thrilling, and somehow cathartic. I had to find out why - what was it that had pulled me and all these other people into rapturously marvelling at such a display of terror? So, some days later I met with Normoyle at a cafe in Sydney in the hope she could explain it.

between ecstasy and agony. Internally I recounted the arc my body had taken in reaction to Normoyle’s violent performance: my face flushing and the hairs on my neck standing on end, my mouth falling agape to suck what air I could into my quivering chest, my fingers curling, digging fingernails into my thighs… It had bordered on perverse. It was an uncomfortable experience to undergo in a room full of people, and an even more uncomfortable one to relay to the performer, but I had to know if this was what it’s all meant to be about. Tentatively I broached the subject, and made the ungainly inquiry into whether noise music played into some sort of fetishism, or some cosmic sensuality. After an awkward pause she explained.

“It’s like the jouissance. It’s French. J-O-U-I-S-SA-N-C-E. Physical or intellectual pleasure, delight or ecstasy.” But it’s like, pleasure beyond pleasure, where it becomes material and expressed in the body and excess. There’s that intellectual kind of obliteration of the music, and then the amplitude drags the body along with it.”

“To try and describe these things using words is far too difficult and, in a sense, ironic. The practitioners are working very hard to get away from language, so to bring it back into language She’d pulled up the term’s Wikipedia page on her is in itself a tragedy of sorts.” phone to help explain. Breathing a sigh of relief, I Kusum was quick to acknowledge how redundant it was to try to verbalise her process; it’s a volatile and unpredictable beast.

“I consider myself to be not fully the composer. I’m not the creator standing there at the front, pressing the button, pushing the music out to the audience.

I’m somewhere between the audience and the PA, listening with my body, and when it gets to the full state I’m losing control of what’s being generated… Your ear reacts, or your body reacts, or it sounds different because of the space that it’s in. That difference is the thing that surprises you, that draws you in, or pushes you away. So, the work itself, or the sound and the performance, always has a kind of potential for disruption… When you feel the sound on your body, no matter how prepared you are, something always happens.”

But here I knew exactly what she meant. Before attending Pretty-Gritty I’d done my research, my prior listening, I’d psyched myself up. I knew exactly what I was getting into. I’d been fully prepared, yet I’d still staggered out of the 107 Projects and shuffled to the train station as the shell of a person; eviscerated.

You’ll find that a lot in noise music, that’s kind of the key. Dissolution of the body. Full obliteration.

‘Dissolution’, ‘obliteration’. These words kept cropping up in our conversation, and I couldn’t help but think of pain and pleasure, the inextricable link

was on the right track. What I’d experienced wasn’t perverse, it was intellectual. Despite her reservations in attempting to explain noise music to me, Normoyle had given me exactly what I wanted: a conceptual rabbit hole to crawl down.

So down I went, and with research I came to understand jouissance and the ‘limit-experience’. It seeks to push human experience beyond the limits of sensory perception, into altered consciousness, embracing Baudelaire’s paradoxes of ‘filthy grandeur’ and ‘sublime disgrace’, and teetering on the cusp of madness. It may be widely attached to sadomasochism, but it’s also attached to our experiences with music and its ability to alleviate anxiety and self-doubt. Escapism, suspended reality, is something we all pursue, be it by watching television, taking drugs, reading celebrity gossip or literature. The limit-experience is simply the next step, not to suspend, but to transcend reality.

After all, the neurological pathways for pain and pleasure overlap, and that’s the beauty of art. What is goodness without sin, light without dark? These are the binaries which build our understanding of the human experience; without them we would feel nothing at all, so we must embrace them.

Now in reminiscing on Pretty-Gritty I think of a Shakespearean quote, a pseudo-intellectual pretence I’d retained from high school without ever quite understanding, “If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.” I understand it now.

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This shit’s not an aberration.

Talking misogyny with Charlotte Wood Words II Cameron Colwell

W

hile attending the Newcastle Writer’s Festival, I was lucky enough to be able to speak with Charlotte Wood, author of the recently published The Natural Way of Things. The novel made the shortlist of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, winner of the Stella Prize, and was awarded winner of the 2016 Indie Book Award. The book is about a group of girls who wake up captured, shaved, and dressed in strange boiler suits somewhere in the outback, before discovering each of them is linked to a sexual scandal with a powerful man.

To begin, I asked Charlotte about the initial drive behind the book.

“Well, the initial spark for the idea came from a radio documentary on the Hay Institution for Girls.

The girls were often victims of sexual assault, and the public response when they talked about it was to lock them up. I was horrified about it, it stuck with me. I tried to write a story set in the sixties but it ended up with a realist, terrible, dead way of writing, and then I started to realise about the attitude that propelled the blame towards those girls.

30

“It’s medieval, but that attitude of blame is still there.”

She tells me about a recent case in which an Army Cadet was sexually assaulted and branded as a ‘Skype Slut.’ There is quiet fury in her voice as she speaks; “Every woman is told from birth there’s something wrong them, and we internalise those message while we fight them. It was just something that I had to get out of me.”

In our chat, I drew attention to the visceral, bodycentric style in her book with a focus on the hair of the women, which grows unkempt throughout: “So I was writing this book, and it was frightening. There was darkness – subconsciously, the book came out of me. I tried to resist the darkness, go around it, and the writing turned to shit. I had to go and let it pour out of me. So the hair was about resisting the ideas we’re fed - that women have to be pretty, clean, quiet, completely hairless. I wanted to show women returning to a natural state.”

The process sounds like an exorcism. Charlotte tells me she was just opening her eyes as she wrote.

“Women have to close their eyes to a lot of things, just to keep going.” At the start of the book she felt,

“Overwhelmed by the shit, and really, it was hard to keep up with all the contemporary examples.

There was that young female presenter who had an affair with a married bloke; overnight she lost her radio career, destroyed, labelled an adulterous tart, and he got away with it. It’s everywhere: Bill Cosby, Rolf Harris, in every arena of life, sports, corporate, whatever. We see it as an aberration but it is not an aberration, it happens every day.”

Somewhat inevitably, we talk about the larger movement of feminism. Charlotte Wood doesn’t necessarily identify as a feminist: “I’m not an activist or a spokesperson, I feel like I’m in a weird position where I feel slightly uncomfortable with the label.

Artists should be free to change their mind. Art is about personal inquiry, and what I did was write a book where I externalised a lot of stuff,” she says.

“You know, if I’d sat down and gone, ‘I’m going to write a feminist novel’, I would’ve thought, ‘Stuff it.’”

I interject, to ask if she think a work of fiction can be truly apolitical. “You can’t write an apolitical novel, and I knew that to a degree, but it was still an intensely personal process.”

“Do you think there’s a particular kind of Australian misogyny?” I asked, curious about the striking characterisation of the two guards in the book: the typically chauvinistic Boncer, and the young, angelfaced Teddy. “Well, you know, Boncer’s awful but everybody knows, Teddy...Teddy’s more complicated in that there’s trust and distrust, Teddy’s more dangerous in that he presents the perception peace and love. It took me a long time to realise that these things present themselves everywhere, you know, it is men putting you down behind your back, judging your body, just being mercilessly critical.”

There’s a section in the novel when three of the girls start grooming themselves and one another, and shaving their legs with whatever they can find. I asked if it was reflective of the idea of women being attached to their own oppression.

“I think that I felt (it was them) surviving in whatever they can, trying to hang onto something before they ended up with this. People go mad. I kept seeing all these images of incarceration...” She told me about Schapelle Corby in jail over the years, her eyebrows became finer and finer as part of her beauty regimen. “You know, even in a hellhole, people continue with domestic rituals, it’s just very sad., It’s just people trying to normalise things.”

Returning to the question of misogyny, I wondered

if she believes are men better or worse than they used to be.

“It’s everywhere: Bill Cosby, Rolf Harris, in every arena of life, sports, corporate, whatever.

We see it as an aberration but it is not an aberration, it happens every day.”

“I don’t know, I think, it [misogyny] hasn’t gone away. I feel like some things have gotten better and some have gotten worse. There’s still the idea that women are sluts if they’re sexual - a lot of this stuff is magazine crap. I mean, half of the time it’s Capitalism, I know men who couldn’t give a shit. But it’s the overwhelming consumer-capitalist demands that make women feel terrible about themselves.”

She says its very demoralising for women when somebody they thought was a friend or colleague says these things. It hurts to hear it about another woman, because, of course, you know it’s not just about her, it’s about you. It’s about all women. I don’t think men have any kind of conception of the pain they cause with language.”

This is “the overwhelming shit” that kickstarted her. I ask if writing about it helped her deal with it. “Yeah, look, it did, but it hasn’t gone away. It helped me feel stronger, braver. It made me feel that being angry isn’t a crime.

Also the response I’ve had from young women is really moving, they feel powerful. A lot of people contacted me, young women, and some men, for voicing stuff. It’s really moving. It’s about to come out in the States and Britain. I’ll be very fascinated to see how it translates [to their experiences].”

Finally, I asked Charlotte where one of the most powerful scenes in the novel came from: where one of the protagonists, Yolanda, resists a guard.

“Probably from fantasy. I mean, I didn’t want to write a book that was so bleak, with the girls ending up so powerless, even though a lot of them do. I wanted to give them a chance to arm themselves; Yolanda is the only one who does it by abandoning her womanhood. I wanted her to have real power and real strength to say, ‘I’m not doing this anymore’.

“A lot of the book is like that. Subconscious stuff.

It sort of was a risk, this book: so much of it might not work, there was a real surreal element. I was aware the whole that time I was navigating the space between reality and dreams.”

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Rabbits Eat Lettuce: A Novice’s Adventure into Bush Doof Culture WORDS II AMY HADLEY

A

uthor’s note: I don’t like dirt. I don’t like camping.

I don’t particularly like the bush. For the sake of good music, new experiences and an honest article, I have recently braved my first bush doof.

I’ve never witnessed a scene more quintessentially Australian than seeing a bloke in the bush laugh to his friend and yell, “Mate, you’re c*nt eyed!” Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that the friend he was talking to was profusely sweating, pupils dilated and experiencing an amphetamine-induced euphoria.

Welcome to Rabbits Eat Lettuce - a bush doof located somewhere between Casino (Northern New South Wales) and the middle of nowhere.

Bush doofs began in the nineties as as an anticlubbing, pro-Earth, psychedelic getaway. They create temporary bush communities which celebrate the natural environment, positive experiences, and freedom of expression. The décor is a kaleidoscope of light shows and eclectic art installations. The music accommodates to practically every electronic niche you could imagine. All that attendees are expected to do is leave no trace, and enjoy themselves without harming others. There’s an unfortunate minority of people at music festivals who aim to start fights, get laid in any capacity, or munch on pills until they make a disgrace of themselves. For whatever reason, this minority doesn’t seem to exist at bush doofs.

Most noticeably, doofs bring together a strange cross section of society who are there to embrace the community, and experience what is pleasurable to them.

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I came to Rabbits Eat Lettuce armed with my gal pal Bec. We are both well-versed in music festivals, yet neither of us had braved a bush doof. We were lured in by the promise of glamping tents, eclectic music, and the opportunity to wear body glitter all weekend.

Funnily enough, the way that we made friends was through our love for everything glittery, iridescent, and holographic. I imagine that our sparkly aesthetic in all its glory was an absolute treat to view under the influence of substance. We revelled in creating glitter beards and adorning new buddies with rhinestones.

It’s tempting to liken Rabbits Eat Lettuce attendees to, “long haired lay-abouts high on the happy herbs” (quoted from Australia’s outback hero, Russell Coight).

Admittedly, my initial judgements were along these lines. I shouldn’t have been so stunned to see such an enormous volume of crocheted bras and harem pants from Tree of Life. By the end of the first day, I coined a term for this segment of the population: ‘career level doofers’. They are the stall holders, workshop leaders, fire dancers, aerial performers, hobby DJs, and drug dealers. Above all, they are nomadic. If you ask a career level doofer where they are from, the most common answer was, “Nowhere in particular.” As an outsider to this world, it was unfathomable for me to imagine people eternally floating from one bush doof to another. However as the days passed, it became clear. Hell, I even contemplated starting my own roaming nail salon called Doofs & Hoofs.

Aside from career level doofers, the main doof population is comprised of metropolitan Australians

like me. They are high achieving students, blue and white collar workers, and your estranged ‘probably took a lot of drugs in the seventies’ aunt or uncle. Sure, the bush isn’t a usual hangout for most urban adults, but it is a place to disconnect from the mundanities of everyday life. There was no mobile phone service, so Rabbits Eat Lettuce created the opportunity to drop off the grid for a few days.

After only a few hours, I found total solace in the disconnection. This is perhaps what is most appealing to people who venture deep into the bush and away from their normal lives.

When falling down the hole which is Rabbits Eat Lettuce, I noticed that attendees enter a hedonistic state. In the bush, pleasure seeking comes in many forms - dancing until the sun rises, proudly wearing your birthday suit, or dropping as many tabs as your brain will allow. If you’re after a more mellow experience, you may find higher consciousness by being at one with a tree. You may want to learn a new skill. Free workshops such as yoga, tie dying, Japanese bondage and Shiatsu massage kept the masses feeling frisky all weekend long. No matter the time of day or night, doofers will let loose. As the sun sets, inhibitions became as irrelevant as your last shower. Under the cover of darkness, sexual conquests became less reserved. In fact, the chances of accidentally stepping on a couple having sex on the dirt dramatically increased.

Now, let’s get to the important business. Between the three stages and bellowing sound systems there was absolutely no shortage of space. They were each set to blend seamlessly into the bush, and decorated to let your eyes feast on lights and lasers. When it came to the munchies, Rabbits Eat Lettuce provided the goods. The main marketplace offered foods to satisfy any craving - pizza, waffles, falafels, burgers, smoothies, Indian, and thankfully, delicious coffee.

There was plenty of space to recline, relax and regroup

before heading back to the dancefloor. If you were part of the minority who actually showered, a pleasant surprise awaited you. The cubicles were pretty clean and consistently had hot water! (Although, rumour has it that someone pooped in the men’s showers).

The only downfall was the very limited opening times of the shower block. I occasionally became desperate to clean up my act, so I resorted to the rinse-yourselfoff-using-the-bathroom-sink option.

When the volunteer team for any event is comprised mainly of stoners, you’re going to encounter some problems with efficiency and organisation. Herein lies my first real criticism. The volunteers were friendly and approachable, but not proactive in resolving issues. When I had troubles with my ticket, it took a day to reach a resolution. When an ATM ate $50 of my friend’s money, the stock standard response from volunteers was, “Oh, that’s shit” and “Maybe go to the operations tent”. This was the festival version of the customer centre mantra, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Thankfully at the operations tent, the volunteers and organisers were far more receptive and able to provide assistance. I felt a particularly strong sense of sympathy towards an organiser who had to spend 10 minutes cutting the wristband off a cretin who tied his on so tightly that his hand went blue.

After all the mischief and adventure of Rabbits Eat Lettuce, I was exhausted to my very core. Even in my state of sluggishness, I knew that I’d been converted.

I really didn’t think the day would come where I would be pro bush doof; I don’t like camping, dirt, or the bush. I will never be ready to become a career level doofer. However, I am certainly ready to start recruiting friends for next year’s edition of Rabbits Eat Lettuce, and for future bush doofs.

Thank you very much to the Rabbits Eat Lettuce team for inviting me to join the hippie-hoppity fun!

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What Not to Wear: shopping ethically in the era of fast fashion Words II Belinda Ramsay

H

ave you ever stopped to think about who sewed together the shirt you’re wearing right now? Or whether the person who plucked the buds of cotton from the plant was even an adult? Whether it’s the cotton woven into our clothing or the raw materials collected to create our accessories, we as consumers are too often the beneficiaries of forced labour. In a world of fast fashion and the ever-present, Instafamous #ootd (outfit of the day), it can be hard to keep up-to-date with the latest trends, let alone ensure that the clothing we’re buying is free from exploitation. So what can be done?

Sunday, 24 April was ‘Fashion Revolution Day’ – to commemorate the 1134 deaths in the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka in 2013, which served as a visible and confronting reminder of how the clothes we enjoy are made. Since the tragedy, 190 brands signed onto the Bangladesh Accord to improve safety and conditions for workers in the local garment industry. However, despite the appearance of improvement, many companies remain vague as to the details of their supply chains, with ambiguous claims they endorse ‘eco-friendly’ production and show ‘care for their workers’. Fashion Revolution’s #whomademyclothes aims to encourage consumers to demand manufacturers take transparent steps toward ensuring that all our clothes are sourced ethically, sustainably, and free from exploitation of workers. It does this alongside other organisational campaigns, such as VGen’s #endchildlabour and International Labour Organisation’s ‘Youth in Action Against Child Labour’ movements,

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In conjunction with ‘Fashion Revolution Day’, the Baptist World Aid released their annual series of industry reports – ‘Behind the Barcode’ - which seek to empower consumers to purchase ethically and, by doing so, encourage companies to ensure the workers in their supply chains are free from exploitation, forced labour and child labour. The reports work by grading more than 300 global and domestic fashion brands from A to F on various ethical standards - with nine brands, including university student favourites ‘General Pants’, ‘Dangerfield’ and ‘Lorna Jane’, receiving an F-grade due to their lack of transparency as to where they source their clothes from.

After reading through the Australian Fashion Report (the major report on ‘Behind the Barcode’), I was surprised to find that despite 77 per cent of companies knowing who their suppliers were at the final stage of production, at a raw materials level, only 5 per cent were aware of all of their suppliers. This means that while a company might be good at ensuring their garments are made by workers who are employed in decent conditions at a supplier level, they can’t ensure that the materials they use come from similar conditions. This presents an enormous challenge for the fashion industry, for as long as inputs and raw materials sit outside the purview of companies, the worst forms of worker rights abuse (including forced and child labour) can continue to remain prevalent.

In considering the lack of transparency and difficulty of tracing some of Australia’s biggest brands – what can be done by us, as consumers, to counter the effects of fast fashion.

Every time you buy a new item of clothing, you’re also contributing to the huge amounts of resources and work that goes into it.

For example, the production of one cotton t-shirt uses 2,700 litres, which is the same amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days.

Therefore, one solution to reducing your environmental and social footprint is buying second-hand. By purchasing vintage or used clothing, you can save your money, op-shop ‘til you drop, and find unique items that make you look and feel ethi-cool in the process.

Take the time to look at the care instructions on the labels on your existing clothes. If you wash and treat your clothes right, you can get a lot more wear out of them and wind up consuming considerably less. Similarly, if you do decide to buy new clothes, you should consider the longevity of your purchase and aim to find wellmade, form-fitting items that you’ll still want to wear in a few years’ time.

Another alternative to buying new clothes is to channel your inner-Pinterest blogger and do it yourself.

In learning basic sewing skills, you can create betterfitting clothes that reflect your personal style, or reinvent your existing wardrobe by mending damaged clothes and upcycling old items to create different looks.

Not only will you look great, you’ll feel like a winning contestant on ‘Project Runway’ – because nothing feels better than responding to a compliment on your killer outfit by saying “Oh this? I made it myself.”

You can also make better purchasing decisions using ethical apps - such as Ethical Consumers Australia’s

‘Good On You’ – which has ratings for almost 1000 fashion and accessory brands in Australia, and allows you to send a message to your favourite brands urging them to do better or congratulating them.

Lastly, to reduce your carbon footprint, as well as allow another ethically-savvy shopper to purchase it, and in turn increase the lifespan of your garment.

Shopping ethically is all about being aware of, and aiming to reduce, your consumption patterns; so in undertaking these little steps, as well as understanding more about the processes behind the brands you’re buying, you can make a real difference to the environmental and social impact of your purchases.

According to the International Labour Organisation, the fashion industry generates over a trillion dollars of export revenue and provides millions of job opportunities for workers, predominantly from low and middle income countries. Therefore, while the fashion industry has great potential to be a catalyst for positive change in the lives of some of the world’s poorest people, it all depends on what products and processes we as consumers choose to purchase and accept.

So the next time you’re shopping for that perfect pair of jeans, or that last minute festival outfit, dress to impress in clothing that is ethically-made, sustainably-produced, and bursting with good vibes for your planet and your fellow human beings.

In the words of iconic fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, “buy less, choose well, and make it last”.

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submissions for ISSUE 5: XO close 24 JUNE 2016

C REATIVE S

Y O U R MOUTH IS AN ASHTRAY WORDS || O. SOSWETI

It didn’t help when Georgie found out I’d been writing letters to my ex-girlfriend, Melina, in Germany. One night Georgie went out drinking and I stayed home ostensibly to write. From the window I watched her approach an idle Mazda, flinging the goon sack onto the passenger seat then following right after it. Then things got a little unpleasant: I crept to the bookshelf, pulled away the paperbacks, and searched for the latest letter; it wasn’t there.

On the porch I smoked cigarettes, choking on tobacco rich saliva, waiting for her to come home. It was about this time, as the sun dipped away from its violet sky, where my petty mind rationalised the furtive letter sending. All up, I had sent 12 over a period of 18 months. Melina lives in Germany, always has, and what begun in Frankfurt as a fling, a fleeting thoughtlessness, soon enveloped my every thought. Besides, I rationalised, hadn’t Georgie forced me to give up Melina, that silly reckless thing, in the first place? Before all that, I was perfectly content to be alone and, you know, enjoy the occasional shag – but that wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t. But I’ve changed. My fingers twitched, my head dizzy from the nicotine. I’ve changed, I’ve changed, I’ve changed.

Four hours later, with a bottle of red wine in hand, Georgie slammed the door, spotted me, marched over, and leant on the balcony skirting. She throws back her head and gulps the wine.

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‘I want you to come in April,’ she said, affecting a falsetto whine, ‘but I don’t want her with you.’

Christ. Not only did she find the letter; she fixed it to fucking memory.

I told her it’s nothing, just atonement from my cheap, lying ex-girlfriend – she didn’t buy it. I said that now I’ve forgiven my ex-girlfriend I could move on and love her, Georgie, without any of that haunting psychic bullshit holding me back. (Whatever that means.)

After I used the word ‘love,’ a shiver of disgust, like a sudden outburst of eczema, riled her body, and she turned, wordlessly, and disappeared into our gloomy unlit apartment.

Back inside, our argument explodes. She tosses the wine bottle at my face, but when it collides with my nose the bottle doesn’t break - it bounces off, spilling red wine on the carpet and the records organised along the bookcase’s bottom shelf. She is pacing and sobbing.

When I try to wrap my arms around her she picks up the wine bottle, bends her knees, and wields it like a club. It is in this moment that I start believing she might want to kill me.

It took some time to pacify her. I knew this wasn’t over, that nothing was resolved. Still, as I stretched the shrunken blanket over my torso, as I wiggled my toes that hung suspended off the couch, as I shut out Geogie’s stomping and indignant mutterings above me, I allowed myself to hope that it was over.

In the morning I retrieved the other letters from the bookshelf and tossed the entire collection, tied in elastic, next to her. She woke with a start, blinking away the lingering constellations of her dreams, and I saw her make-up smeared across the white pillows in black blotches.

‘You can read them,’ I said. ‘All of them.’

She sat up and stared at the blinds, as if she could see past them, out the window.

‘I don’t have anything to hide,’ I said.

She didn’t meet my eyes.

My nose bled throughout the day and while my computer was loading I noticed my reflection, realising how livid the bruising had become. I had to redo an assignment from yesterday after the blood dripping from my nose splattered like a Pollock painting on the page. At 2:30pm I tossed all the paperclips in the bin and went home.

She was sitting in front of her laptop, grinning at me, a ten-paper joint hanging between her lips. On the table were scissors, a grinder, a torn-up train ticket, and a half ounce of marijuana in a snap-lock bag.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Started without you.’

I told her I didn’t mind. I put my bag down, grabbed a Three Gents from the fridge and sat on the couch beside her.

‘We okay?’ she asked.

‘You’re wearing the same clothes from this morning,’ I said.

She lit the joint with a flourish, smoking with multiple staccato puffs until the tip was enshrined by glowing red. Ash fell onto her oversized t-shirt.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I asked.

‘Got fired last week.’ After another puff she passed me the joint. I loosened my tie and undid the top button before having a poke. She got off the couch. ‘Thought I already told you.’

‘Well, you didn’t.’

‘Right, I guess we’re in the habit of not telling each other things then?’

I exhaled the smoke, felt my mind uncoil, tried to block out the memories of last night as they resurfaced.

‘But it’s okay.’ She walked over and gave me a single, soft kiss on the lips. ‘Everything’s okay now.’

Reaching across the table to flick the ash into the ashtray, I noticed scrawl along the joint paper.

I rotated it slowly and saw the unmistakable flourishes of Melina’s handwriting.

‘Finish the rest,’ Georgie said. She left the room, stomped upstairs, and my unsteady hand held the joint between my mouth and the ashtray, unsure of what to do next.

All day at work I bent paperclip men with impossible limbs, and tied them together to create little gremlins.

By about midday I had a murderous battlefield of them across my desk. My fingers grew stiff from bending the wire but I carried on, wasting two boxes of paperclips.

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Ready WORDS || REBECCA MCMARTIN

“You’re up, Leah!”

Oh, shit. With my heart pounding adrenaline against my eardrums, I stood on the highest ledge of the Wattamolla jump rock and fixed my eyes on the lightning that electrified the horizon. I avoided looking down, but my mind drew pictures of the torrential waterfall crashing into the lagoon below me. I gulped.

Don’t cry. Be brave.

I usually loved storms and the salty smell that lingered when it rained. This summer, everyone had prayed for rain in this two-month drought, but today the rumble of the thunder made me want to vom. The rock under my feet was slippery from the morning’s drizzle and the normally-pristine pool was as dark as the clouds above me. But that’s why we jumped today.

The ‘freedom jump’ was an annual HSC tradition.

Every new Year Twelve student from the Shire high schools would mark the end of summer by bombing off the Wattamolla waterfall. It was only safe to jump after it’d rained – unless you wanted to become dead meat at the bottom of the rocky lagoon. But I’d been hoping it wouldn’t rain all holidays. I didn’t want to be here and I didn’t want to go back to school.

“Come oooooooon!” someone shouted. A line had formed behind me and the metal fence clanged as more guys jumped over the barrier to join the back of the queue. Some were already drenched, ready to go again, and their wet bodies shivered in the wind.

“Just take your time, babe!” Emily called from behind the barrier. She bounced on her toes and waved like a proud parent. “You can do it, Leah” mumbled Paul, determined not to shake the iPhone in his hand.

He was crouched beside me, ready to capture the long shots that the GoPros didn’t. My friends were the only reason I didn’t skip today.

I wiggled my toes over the rock edge, screwed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. Relax. I visualised the rush of cold against my skin and the bubbles that would snort from my nostrils when my body hit the water. But I opened my eyes to see the darkened sky.

I hadn’t jumped.

“Are you kidding me?”

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Loud groans erupted behind from me. I opened my mouth to plead “Just give me a minute” when I was cut off by a chorus of “Jesus Christ woman!” and “Wuss!” and “Before it starts pissing down again!” Paul’s shushing wasn’t loud enough to compete with the protests, but I was sure I could hear Em yell, “Just shut up, you wankers!”

“Come on, guys!” a voice I hadn’t heard in weeks silenced the crowd. I turned to face the surf-blondhaired boy, wearing his familiar Endeavour Sports High boardies. Saxon. My stomach dropped. I didn’t know he was still here. I’d watched him jump off the rock with his new girlfriend wrapped around his waist and her gigantic boobs shoved under his chin like his own personal floatation device. I’d waited for Em to give the all clear that he’d left, but he must have leapt the fence to retake his turn. I didn’t expect him to defend me. A lump formed in my throat. We met eyes and I half-smiled when he turned to his mates and sneered, “She’s just not ready.”

Amused scoffs and “ooooooooo”s broke out while the air was knocked from my lungs faster than if I’d jumped off the ledge. Saxon was being nudged in the ribs by his mates while he covered his mouth to fakehide his grin. My eyes scanned the crowd to find Em, but I couldn’t see her behind the gossiping girls. Oh God, no! Everyone knew. Or they were just finding out. Paul was looking down, but I could see that even he was pursing his lips to hide his smile.

Don’t cry, Leah! My heart pounded louder than the thunder. I turned to face the pool and closed my eyes so no one could see my eyes water.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Be brave.

The summer holidays had started with a storm. My parents were away and I had the house to myself. I was lying partially-naked in my bed with Saxon on top of me. I’d let him slide off my undies but I shook my head when he tried to unclip my bra – its padding provided the only illusion to a curvaceous form that I otherwise lacked. This was the furthest we’d gone.

Don’t cry, Leah. Be brave. “It’s been three years, Lee. Haven’t we waited long enough?” he breathed in my ear, objecting my objections. His stubble tickled my neck. “You know I love you, right?”

I felt the pressure of his knees against my thighs as my body became a starfish. “Don’t be chicken, yeah?” Any protest I was going to voice was cut off by his tongue forcing its way into my mouth. His penis likewise stabbed my pelvic bone and my heart beat against my chest like a million lightning bolts. Oh God, is this happening? I closed my eyes and gripped his shoulders. Be brave. With one hand, he pushed it down at an angle so it fit where it was supposed to. Ok, this is happening! It’s happening! It hurt in the same way I imagined it hurt the doggy door when our obese dog tried to squeeze through it. “Just relax, yeah?”

Rain – slanted through the flyscreen by the wind – was splattering against my face. Just relax. I stared, wide-eyed, around my room: the wilted candle cast our twisted shadow against the wall; the textbooks from my Prelim exams still littered the floor; and the DVDs I’d borrowed for my preferred couple night with Saxon were untouched next to the microwave popcorn.

We had waited three years. And I knew some girls who hadn’t waited long at all. I thought I was old enough. Was I old enough? I was seventeen. Did that make me ready? Most of my friends had already…

How did they know they were ready? What did ready even mean? It wasn’t that I was waiting for marriage.

But was it meant to feel like this? Bloody Catholic education! I bet the public school girls didn’t worry about this.

“Saxon, I don’t want to keep–” he cut me off by devouring my ear. I jerked my shoulder into my neck and kicked my legs the way a child would squirm away from an insect. “Saxon!” I clenched down there to push him out but that hurt me even more. “Stop!” I was worried he wouldn’t, but then the thrusting ended. I touched my hand to my heart, ensuring it didn’t explode through my chest.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

I opened my eyes as rain splattered against my forehead. The drops made ripples in the water below.

“Geez! Now we can’t have a go!”

There were girls shrieking, running for cover, followed by some of the blokes, but I still had an audience: “I’m still keen!” – “You reckon she’ll jump, or nah?” – “Yeah, nah!”

I closed my eyes, wishing they’d all leave. Whether I did or didn’t jump was irrelevant. I just didn’t want an audience.

“Leah, my phone’s getting wet!” Paul complained. “If you’re going to jump already–” “She’s not gonna jump, is she?” Oh,God! I turned and gaped at Saxon’s floatation device. Why was she still here? How’d he even have a new girlfriend already?

Up close I recognised her from the bus stop. I’d always seen her in the Woolooware High uniform, but now she was leaning against the barrier, close to Saxon, with a towel wrapped around her perfect, athletic body. She’d refused to jump alone, and didn’t stop shrieking until the water had drowned her out, which was why Saxon was waiting to jump on his own, to show off to his mates. I just wanted to be alone, but I knew he wasn’t going to leave. Here’s to another shitty summer memory, I thought and took a shaky step off the ledge, trying to steady myself on my way back to the steps.

“Nah, she’s too chicken.” Saxon covered his mouth again when he answered her, but everyone still heard him. His shoulders shrugged up and down, the way they always did when he laughed at his own jokes.

The joke, of course, was still me.

His fist slammed against the pillow centimetres from my head and I screamed. With bulging eyes, I scrambled upright and drew the sheets closer to my body. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t see his face but his hands were clenched. “I’m sorry, I just wasn’t rea–”

My heart stopped again, but this time, I clenched my fists and forced a smile as I glared at him. The snorts from his friends quietened, and I could see Em, even in her fiercely protective mode, stop midway through climbing over the barrier towards me. Lightning whipped the sky and thunder growled in the distance.

“Three years, Leah! And we were practically halfway done! How could you not be ready?”

Nah, she’s too chicken. I drew a deep breath in, savouring the sweet smell of the summer rain. “Not as much as your girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry,” my lip quivered. I touched his shoulder but he flinched away. Tears formed in my eyes. “We can try again, I’m ready now,” I lied, folding my arms to hide my bra. “Just give me another chan– Saxon, wait!”

Within seconds, he’d dressed and slammed my door.

I shrank back into my bed and listened as he gunned his car engine. I squeezed my pillow, sure my heart had stopped, and felt the raindrops creep through my window and pelt me hard in the face.

I smirked at the look on his face and for too-short a moment, I relished the jeers being directed at him before I laughed, threw my hands in the air, kicked my legs under my body, and jumped.

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Sabra WORDS || YEHUDA

I’ve roamed the hills in search of healing instead I found new villages littered with old stories prickly pear tales of people here before our “chosen” Sabra.

Yet you tell another tale, Older, rooted the book.

Dispersed you say, but we came first.

Three times a day you do not pray yet still you believe in a straight line from then to now, never to see what stands between.

I was born to a culture with knots like an olive tree, twisted by magic, time and pain wrinkled like wise women, but you have a smooth soldier’s stare and you never bent over books.

You walked in fields around Mount Zion

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as you waited for test of faith by a priestly nation.

Should you pass through the valleys to lose fear of death, you might notice the shepherd eats lamb, and that friends are a poor peace offering.

Yes, they died for sins but taking land no redemption.

A people of the book, our sin is in a story we have untold – who am I to tell it?

A silent radical in another land, a land that is still not mine – I stand, ready to be heard but never know when to speak.

Should I need to?

All around you writing is on The Wall.

Sabra: Literally, Hebrew for prickly pear. It is a colloquial term for an Israeli born in Israel – they have a hardy and hostile exterior but are sweet beneath the skin. Previously, the prickly pear was used to mark the perimeters of old Palestinian towns, many of which now lie in ruins.

R EP E AT O F F ENDE RS

THE STEW REVIEW || PHILLIP LEASON Feelin’ hunger along with the thuursty-ness this cactus talk has brought on? Me too. So, through gross generalisation, I’ve associated a variety of restaurants with cacti that either have a desert in their country of origin or literally have a desert in their name. (Although, be well aware that I have no idea where cacti actually grow).

CONTRABANDO

21 BENT ST, SYDNEY

Mon: Noon-3PM Tues-Fri: Noon-3PM, 5PM-midnight Sat & Sun: Closed Forget Mad Mex, Contrabando does Mexican food right. The dimly lit restaurant is tucked quietly underneath a bar near Wynyard station, but it’s usually pretty busy, especially on Taco Tuesday.

Not to be confused with the Krazy Glue apocalypse in The Lego Movie, Taco Tuesday at Contrabando means their tacos, which are normally $6-8, are just $3. These scrumptious, soft-shelled delights are dripping with delicious sauces, and the lengthy list of available tacos also includes some interesting fusion flavours like ‘cheeseburger’ and ‘Korean chicken’ (although, they’re a novelty which pale in comparison to the more traditional offerings). Plan your cravings for Mexican food around Tuesdays, and every week you’ll be quoting Jason Segel in I Love You, Man, “Yeah, I had a nice time man. Those fish tacos are the tits.”

4.5/5

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SAHARA BY THE PARK JAMBO JAMBO 100 BURWOOD RD, BURWOOD AFRICAN RESTAURANT 10AM-10PM, erryday

103 WILLOUGHBY RD, CROWS NEST Tues-Sun: 6PM-10PM

This cosy little Ethiopian restaurant is painted in rasta colours, with curios and posters lining the walls. The staff are incredibly friendly, and eager to give background and cultural information on the dishes. The meals come on large wooden platters, with rolls of flatbread (like, literally rolled up) to share: overall this makes for an interesting and exciting dining experience. Plus it’s BYO to boot.

So next time you’re in Crows Nest thinking, “If I eat Thai food again this week I just might die,” give Jambo Jambo a go. Just don’t wear white; you eat with your hands and those exotic spices leave a hell of a stain.

4/5

Sahara by the Park isn’t quite classy, and it’s not quite homely either. Their walls are decorated with framed tapestries and shisha pipes, but there’s also a TV playing music videos. No matter how civilised you plan for your evening to be, it’s impossible to ignore a widescreen when it’s playing clips from Metallica’s Cunning Stunts live DVD. The Turkish cuisine is tasty, although don’t be surprised if you have to wait a while for your meal. The wait staff remember orders, instead of writing them down, and the real perk of this is that sometimes they get things wrong. This resulted in me accidentally receiving a hefty grill plate that was almost twice the value of my actual order. They also do that annoying thing where the bread serving doesn’t match the dip portions they accompany, leaving you sucking blobs of hummus from the prongs of your fork.

2.5/5

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FILMS Mia Madre

WORDS II CAMERON COLWELL The thing about Mia Madre is that, two or three years ago, before my introduction to the world of European drama, I would’ve been totally stunned by this arty grief film. As it stands, Mia Madre simply feels passable. Its plot follows a director, Margherita (Margherita Buy), trying to deal with an obnoxious film star (John Turturro), her family, and her dying mother (Giulia Lazzarini). Despite the sleekness and beauty with which the plot is rendered, it feels quite thin.

However, while the film lacks originality, and the attempts at comedy largely falls flat, it does have moments of emotional impact.

Mia Madre effectively utilises the complications of delineating reality from art to hinge its conflict on. The film’s strongest moments are when it shines a light on how Margherita, a brilliant but overexerted director, loses grip on her methodical way of functioning. A breakdown during a visit from an electrician is at once cringeworthy and heart-rending.

Unfortunately, while Margherita offers an interesting character study, her idiosyncrasies are not enough to sustain the film for 90 minutes. When the mother of the title finally does die, audiences might feel relief rather than sympathy.

3/5

ALLEGIANT

WORDS II EMMA JACKSON Walking into the movie theatre and realising that Allegiant was in fact part one of two, rather than the final instalment of the trilogy I had been expecting, I was glad I’d smuggled in a bottle of champagne.

Yet, despite dividing an average-sized single book into two movies, the film still seemed to neglect many of the more engaging and complex plot lines for the sake of a single, predictable narrative. I’d had vaguely high hopes that Tris and Four’s romantic relationship would continue to be as steadfast as it was in Insurgent, but instead it fell back on the hackneyed trope of mistrust and miscommunication, with a tokenistic make-up kiss to resolve everything in the end.

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Filling many of the leading roles with women was something I admired in the book, however the film took no time to consider the motivations of its female antagonist. Rather, she was disappointingly reduced to the two-dimensional ‘villain’ archetype.

If the film adaptation of Allegiant attempted to embellish heavy moral dilemmas to make it more consumable, it failed. Instead, I was met with two hours of unimaginative futuristic tech and unnecessary slow-mo.

1.5/5

The Jungle Book

WORDS II GRETA QUEALY

I was just a young cub when I first watched the original animated Jungle Book, so I don’t remember too much about it. What I do recall is that it was a magical story, and that feeling of magic returns in this modern interpretation of Rudyard Kipling’s timeless tale.

The ground-breaking technology in the film, combining CGI with live action, is phenomenal. If somebody told me the animals had been plucked from various jungles for filming purposes I’d believe them, yet their facial expressions appeared unnervingly human. Twelve-yearold Neel Sethi’s performance as Mowgli is astounding, especially when you consider that he had no real actors to bounce off in filming; his connection with the CGI animals feels genuine.

The revised narrative also explores the darker, more adult theme of man’s destruction of nature, and Mowgli’s innocence and love for the jungle is placed in stark contrast with the destruction wrought by older men. Hopefully this timely environmental message will resonate with younger viewers.

The Jungle Book is an engrossing experience which takes viewers on their own journey through a fantastical world that, if the destruction of our natural environment continues, we may only ever dream about. I would go so far as to say that watching the film is one of the bare necessities of life.

4/5

BOOKS Wasted Elspeth Muir REVIEW II ANGUS DALTON Elspeth Muir’s staggering memoir begins at the funeral of her younger brother, Alexander. She describes him in the coffin: “Beneath the lid was my brother’s soggy body – fresh from the refrigerator – pickled in embalming fluids, alcohol and river water.” From this vivid description until the end of the book, Elspeth’s narration is superb, sinuous, and unrelentingly engrossing.

Alexander’s body was fished out of the Brisbane River three days after he disappeared from a boozy end-ofsemester celebration. At his time of death he had a blood alcohol level of 0.25. Wasted takes us through Elspeth’s cold shock and her life between Melbourne and Buenos Aires; all the while, she tries to pull together an explanation for her brother’s death. Is the alcohol industry to blame, with its flashy marketing and loose morals? Or the government, who treats alcohol like it’s only dangerous in the hands of minorities, addicts, and the crowds of people who used to converge on Kings Cross?

Elspeth weaves her personal observations of drunken violence and sexual assault with interviews and research, and she’s never preachy. She’s untangling this mess with one hand and continuing to binge drink with the other.

There is no lapse in urgency in this raw, brilliant memoir; this conversation is a vital one. Please read this book.

5/5

Fellside M.R. Carey REVIEW II ERIN RUSSELL M.R. Carey’s new novel Fellside is a rich tale of redemption. Following the story of a convicted murderer, Jess Moulson. Carey guides the reader through an insightful and descriptive look into prison life. Using third person narration, Carey explores not only Jess’ experiences of prison, but also her relationships with those around her, and the depth this gives to each of the characters is captivating. Jess’ account of the toll that prison takes on inmates weaves such intricate storylines that you won’t be able to put Fellside down. As the story unfolds and a second trial is undertaken, Jess untangles a sinister web to uncover a

secret which leaves her haunted. Much like his previous novel, Carey has added an element of the supernatural in Jess’ encounter with the ghost of a young boy. Carey’s descriptive language transports you into the world he has created, and the twists his novel takes will leave you guessing until the very end. As Jess comes to terms with her new life in prison, she is exposed to a world she had forgotten. She must fight for what is right, and discover secrets about herself and the other prisoners at Stanford that are better left unearthed.

4/5

Hot Milk Deborah Levy WORDS II JOSEPHINE FENN To capture the intricacy and uniqueness of a motherdaughter relationship within a work of fiction is so often attempted, but rarely executed to such a degree as in Deborah Levy’s new novel. Hot Milk follows Sofia, a 25-year-old anthropologist working in a coffee shop, and her sick mother, Rose. The two have left their home in London for Almería, in the south-east of Spain, so Rose can receive treatment from the renowned and unconventional Dr Gomez. Through Sofia’s first person narration and impeccable prose, Levy captures life in its beauty and intensity.

In the context of illness and co-dependence, Hot Milk thrives in nuance. Rose’s illness blurs the line between purely physical and psychosomatic, and her daughter’s persistent quest for a diagnosis will likely resonate with many readers. Like many aspects of the novel, Rose’s condition exists in a grey area, and the relationship between mother and daughter is toxically co-dependent, with the two women sharing the roles of abuser and abused.

Whilst the plot of Hot Milk is engaging, it’s the exquisite language that makes this novel so exceptional. Levy’s descriptions of Sofia’s surroundings make it seem as if she exists in a vivid dreamscape, noting the astonishing beauty of both the natural and the built world, of emotions, and of life itself.

This is certainly not a novel to overlook. It’s a worthwhile read for anyone, and is literary fiction at its absolute best. It would be surprising not to see Hot Milk at least nominated for a major prize this year.

5/5

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MUS IC M83 - Junk

WORDS II BENJAMIN CANT After scoring soundtracks for Hollywood films, Anthony Gonzalez has returned as M83, along with his crew of crowd-sourced musicians, for a seventh album: Junk, an upbeat psych-pop extravaganza.

This banger of an album pays homage to the ephemeral eighties dream pop era, and with popping bass lines and blaring synths, the opening track ‘Do It, Try It’ grounds Junk with mysterious but optimistic vibes. Through the collection of 15 tracks we experience jazzy saxophones, passages of gentle ambience, groovy slap riffs and overblown guitar solos. All of this will catch in your brain, and will keep you occupied as you hum your way through woeful two-hour lectures.

Gonzalez says he has taken his usual layers of musical eclecticism even further in Junk to create an ‘organised mess’. Well, an organised mess is exactly what Junk is, but it’s bound to be a divisive release for long term M83 fans.

With its daggy album artwork, stupid title, and sickeningly cheesy jams, you have to ask, “is he taking the piss?” But every move on Junk seems so deliberate and self-aware in its utter dagginess, that Gonzalez must know what he’s doing.

Despite its fragmented structure, Junk will still catch you in its orbit and carry you on a pleasant astral journey. Not a fan at first? Give it another listen, it will grow on you.

4/5

The Dandy Warhols - Distortland WORDS II MIKHAYLA TROPE

The Dandy Warhols have always offered a really weird hybrid of apathetic rock, subtle country and psychedelia.

Their newest album is no exception. Despite subtle stylistic changes they have made on the new record, it distinctly

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lacks genre, something that was always endearing about their music. I wouldn’t say Distortland is my favourite album of theirs, but it would be hard to have complaints about such a familiar product. It neatly balances between upbeat whimsical psychedelic pop with bouncy basslines (‘Pope Reverend Jim’ and ‘All the Girls in London’), and darker reflective melodies with stripped back vocals (‘You are Killing Me’, ‘Give’).

Like The Dandy Warhols’ last studio album, This Machine, Distortland seems to trend towards a folky-country version of their unique sound, away from some of their nineties grunge influences. Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s voice still changes between songs to suit the tone, but this time in a less theatrical way. Instead, the performance is a little more personal and relatable, and displays more maturity.

Distortland will come across to some as not really groundbreaking or exciting, but an album doesn’t have to be groundbreaking to hold its own. It’s solid, comforting, easy to feel at home with.

3.5/5

The Lumineers - Cleopatra WORDS II NICK WASILIEV

Four years ago, Colorado-based band The Lumineers’ selftitled debut, and single ‘Ho Hey’, were wildly successful, coinciding with the folk rock revival that saw similar bands like Of Monsters & Men and Mumford & Sons ruling the charts. The Lumineers music spoke to the masses with its Americana style and ‘less-is-more’ approach, despite being outstandingly un-noteworthy.

Fast forward to now. This sophomore effort showcases a coming of age and presents thought-provoking stories that unearth the band’s true potential.

The first single ‘Ophelia’, along with ‘Angela’, ‘In The Light’ and piano outro ‘Patience’ shows just how appealing simple music can be, but the best song on here is undoubtedly the title track, ‘Cleopatra’. With moving narrative lyrics over an anthemic folk-rock jig, it’s a knee-slapping, toe-tapping delight. Cleopatra doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it reflects artists whose success has made them wiser. It’s a solid pop-Americana record, a refreshing logical progression from – and improvement on – its predecessor.

4/5

APPS THEATRE WORDS II EMMA HARVEY AND PHILLIP LEASON BOMB CACTUS

Bomb Cactus is like a combination of the dinosaur click-and-jump you get when Google Chrome can’t connect, and the online ‘maths’ games you were allowed to play in school. So, you’re a white circle rolling around a bomb that changes in size and colour. Twist! The bomb is covered in cacti, which you have to jump over. Twist! Sombreros are circling in the background as UFOs. When you fail at the game it gives you passive aggressive messages like, “You like the thorns?” or congratulates you for playing “23 games!” (yes, sadly I did play this more than 23 times).

Bomb Cactus doesn’t seem to have any idea of what it’s about, and the link between the Mexican theme and bombs remains elusive. But it’s so confused that it’s lovable. I don’t think I’m going to delete it.

3/5

ROLLER CACTUS 3D

The premise of this game is the best.

You’re a cactus on roller-skates, with a baller pair of sunnies, throwing shapes so you can safely skate through cactus-sized holes in brick walls. As the player, you have to adjust the cactus’ pose so he doesn’t get torn to pieces. The issue with the game is the ads. Every time your cactus explodes, you have to sit through a 30 second commercial for another app, and are directed away to the app store. I so badly wanted to keep that cactus dancing, but Roller Cactus 3D is simply unplayable. It seemed like a tragedy at first, but I think it’s for the best, because I know I could’ve wasted days on this game.

0.5/5

DESERT ESCAPE

Desert Escape is another ‘jump over the obstacles’ game, but with a twist.

You’re a piece of tumbleweed, so you’re bouncing all over the map already. Instead of tapping to jump, you tap to bounce down. On principal this sounds like a nifty variation, but the grasp of physics required to accurately calculate the bouncing was simply too great. So, with that said, steer clear of Desert Escape and download Robot Unicorn Attack instead. That game is the best.

1/5

THE EMERALD CITY SIMULCAST WORDS II EMMA HARVEY

Australian National Theatre Live is doing great things for Australian entertainment. Since its launch in 2010, the project has partnered with theatres, broadcasters and cinemas in order to film and distribute Australian theatre to local cinemas all across the country. Trying to condense larger-than-life, high energy stage performances onto screen is a big task. Not to mention that innovation in the face of tradition will always bring its own challenges (the old man who waggled his finger at the organisers during the Q&A can attest to this). But it translates surprisingly well.

Unfortunately, the choice to remount David Williamson’s 1987 play, Emerald City in partnership with Griffin Theatre is quite simply, a waste of a good idea.

The script itself is a poorly disguised writer’s rant compartmentalised into six characters, leaving very little room for depth or authenticity. Williamson’s work critiques contemporary morals, namely the dumbing down of art in a world preoccupied with beauty and money. The problem being that the play itself is no smarter than the ideas it attempts to criticise. In short, Emerald City tries to be self-aware, but only succeeds in being self-indulgent.

At the end of the day, and no surprise, the 1980s don’t translate well into the 21st century. Some quips were a little on the nose and others, like the imitation of an Aboriginal man during a prank phone call, were simply racist. Director Lee Lewis justified the remount in saying that the artistic climate in Sydney and Melbourne has changed remarkably little since the eighties, and therefore Williamson’s play still has the ability to provoke audiences. Unfortunately, I don’t think that was reason enough.

2/5

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HOROSCOPES WORDS || YEHUDA AHARON

TAURUS

Peace of mind awaits you in student politics.

GEMINI

Go to the airport arrivals with a sign that reads ‘Simon’. He is your true love.

CANCER

You are intelligent but occasionally say silly things.

Also you fall for vague Facebook character tests that could be describing anybody. Trust your horoscopes instead.

LEO

Try new things this month, like handing in your essay on time. Or don’t, it’s not like I care.

VIRGO

Your dog is having an affair with that smutty poodle down the road. If word gets out then it will ruin the delicate neighbourhood dynamic that you have taken for granted. It is your job to stop this from happening.

LIBRA

You’ve had food stuck in your teeth all day. I’m sorry but it really bugs me.

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SCORPIO

Try cold showers, they’re good for your hair follicles. Don’t like it? Well isn’t it a shame that your housemate forgot to pay the bill?

SAGITTARIUS

After the show it’s the after party. And after the party it’s the hotel lobby. You don’t get that if you stay airbnb but at least you get a good sleep.

CAPRICORN

I know you’re on a budget, but it is time to treat yourself. Go and buy yourself some goon and Coon TM.

AQUARIUS

Your fortunes will be found in a chilli bush. Go home and plant as many as you can, then watch the profits roll in.

PISCES

Take up smoking and trash a hotel room.

ARIES

I’m sorry Arians, you are last and I am hung over. Why don’t you just Google your horoscope instead?

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